I have been following this project through screenshots in the Screenshot Survival topic for a while now, and the dark atmosphere coupled with all the zombies made me really eager and stoked for this. Given that I didn't really follow the project page itself too closely, I had no idea what to expect once I booted the game for the first time.

When I finally did so, I was glad to see that it was a pretty nice little Action RPG with some very cool ideas. Unfortunately, it was also dragged down by some glaring flaws that made this game not as great as it could have been.

PRESENTATION AND STORY

Every map and every scenery looks perfectly ominous, like a dystopian landscape needs to be, generating an atmosphere of isolation and danger in which the player must survive. The character sets that depict the zombies look appropriately dystopian, being the remains of unfortunate citizens who got infected, while still being stylish with their big heads and cartoony looks. They fail to scare for having way too simple behaviors and AIs, but other than that, they do their job of being fiendish enemies and populating the post-apocalyptic landscape well.

The title screen has an ominous and tense ambient sound with some disturbing moans and screams, giving the player a creepy, psychological horror-esque expectation. Strangely, and unfortunately, the game itself never delivers on that expectation, being more of an action-survival game with very little actual horror. The music during the game itself, on the other hand, is excellent, comprised of pretty awesome compositions that fit the overall action-survival mood of the game, keeping the player rather pumped to explore and complete the given quests. I don't understand why the title screen would sell us one thing while the game itself delivers us another, but that's okay, since the game itself is pretty solid.

The game takes place in a typical post-apocalyptic scenario, where war, famine and disease have ravaged the Earth, followed by a zombie virus. Typical post-apocalyptic scenario, a tad generic, but done well in spite of that. This game's focus is clearly the gameplay, so that's not really a huge problem.

GAMEPLAY

The game itself is an action RPG where you get to shoot zombies, hit zombies with melee weapons, grab useful items, and explore. The game also relies heavily on survival mechanics, where scavenging and staying safe are always a must in order to stay alive, all while still exploring and reaching the goals. I particularly like that the HUD allows for hotkey binding, which is sorely missed from many other RPG Maker action games. The game's epic and fun most of the time, save for a few shortcomings related to the battle system and interface.

Lots to explore, I like that

Every environment is full of nooks and crannies to explore, many passages and abandoned rooms to discover, where you can find useful things that make you glad you tried to investigate. Amidst all the hubris and chaos, exploring this semi-open world is a pretty fun endeavor, and stocking up on healing items is a must. Always keep an eye out for items lying on the floor, in trash bins, in lockers, fridges, etcetera.

You get to explore abandonded fallout shelters, vehicles, laboratories, warehouses, shops, and so on. The kind of stuff you'd expect in a post-apocalyptic scenario, and there's a lot of it to feed one's urges of exploration. I'm a sucker for exploration, and this game gave me what I wanted.

Not that much of a tutorial

I like it when games try to have tutorials to explain their mechanics, but in this game, the "tutorial" is simply a very long section of textual explainations of how things work. I'd much prefer if there was an actual playable tutorial instead.

The way it is, it'd be much better if you just included a "README" which the player could read at his/her own pace.

Did I really equip that?

The way a player equips an item is a tad weird and made me quite a bit confused. You first key-bind your equipment, then you "use" as though it was an usable item... and there's no clear indication of whether the player is really wearing said item or not. This is strange and confused me a lot. Say, there's a wool coat we find, I think it's in Area 01 or something, where a message simply pops up "wool coat" when you use it on a character.

A nice class system

In the beginning of the game, we are asked to pick a class and a location. Each class has a different set of skills and statuses, and it's nice to be able to pick one that best suits our play style. Some are better at melee, others are better at shooting, and there are other attributes that define the characters as well.

I particularly like the Seeker. It's a versatile jack-of-all-trades, but mostly an excellent shooter, and that speaks to me directly in what concerns the way I like to play this kind of game.

Way too few save points

That's one thing that made me ragequit a few times: forgetting to save the game, because the only save point available is right at the beginning of the stage, making me not bother backtracking. With so many computers around in abandoned laboratories and what not, maybe there could be more save points so we don't have to waste our time returning to the first computer we encounter, right?

This actually took its toll on my patience in a way I didn't expect it to. More savepoints would be fundamental to keep other people from losing their temper the way I did, I imagine. At least enemies don't respawn, meaning our paths to the save point are usually safe and sound, but it's still a piece of work.

Slightly clunky ABS

Unfortunately, in spite of the cool premise of this Action RPG, this game suffers from many shortcomings common to tile-based RPG Maker ABSes. First of all, that turning around problem: whenever you turn around, you take a step, which means giving the enemies a free hit whenever you have to turn around to get them and they're too close. Second, repetitive hit-and-run is the only way to attack enemies while avoiding damage if you're out of ammo (when you do have ammo, you can take shelter behind crates, which really comes in handy), and sometimes I didn't wanna bother doing it, so I just let myself take hits while beating the enemy. Third, and finally, you can get cornered by enemies and become a completely helpless sitting duck. I confess I ragequit for a while when that first happened to me.

Thankfully, those flaws don't completely ruin the game, they only make it a lot more annoying than it had to be.

I'd like to recommend every person trying to make an action game with RPG Maker to play Startropics, a nice NES action-adventure which shows that tile-based action systems can work. While it does contain a few things that are not feasible in a tile-based setting, some of its general mechanics are tile-constrained, and those can be very useful to get some ideas on how to make a working ABS in RPG Maker.

OVERALL

This is a game that has a nice premise, and is populated with nice ideas throughout. It's not the most unique thing I've ever seen, but it's one of the very few survival-action-RPG games I've played that were made in RPG Maker, and it's far from being the worst one at that. I really like the exploration and survival elements of it, but the action battle system itself could use a lot of improvement.

I'd still like to recommend this game to fans of survival and action games, in spite of its shortcomings, because it sure has a lot to offer in that sense. Just remember: do return to that first computer in order to save from time to time, you'll sorely regret it if you don't. Maybe, if I was a bit more survival-action savvy, I'd have enjoyed this game more than I did.